Electronic devices installed in a vehicle have been increased significantly in their number and variety along with recent digitalization of vehicle parts. Generally, electronic devices may be used throughout the vehicle, such as in a power train control system (e.g., an engine control system, an automatic transmission control system, or the like), a body control system (e.g., a body electronic equipment control system, a convenience apparatus control system, a lamp control system, or the like), a chassis control system (e.g., a steering apparatus control system, a brake control system, a suspension control system, or the like), a vehicle network (e.g., a controller area network (CAN), a FlexRay-based network, a media oriented system transport (MOST)-based network, or the like), a multimedia system (e.g., a navigation apparatus system, a telematics system, an infotainment system, or the like), and so forth.
The electronic devices used in each of these systems are connected via the vehicle network, which supports functions of the electronic devices. For instance, the CAN may support a transmission rate of up to 1 Mbps and support automatic retransmission of colliding messages, error detection based on a cycle redundancy interface (CRC), or the like. The FlexRay-based network may support a transmission rate of up to 10 Mbps and support simultaneous transmission of data through two channels, synchronous data transmission, or the like. The MOST-based network is a communication network for high-quality multimedia, which may support a transmission rate of up to 150 Mbps.
Meanwhile, the telematics system and the infotainment system, like most enhanced safety systems of a vehicle do, require higher transmission rates and system expandability. However, the CAN, FlexRay-based network, and the like may not sufficiently support such requirements. The MOST-based network, in particular, may support a higher transmission rate than the CAN or the FlexRay-based network. However, applying the MOST-based network to vehicle networks can be costly. Due to these limitations, an Ethernet-based network is often utilized as a vehicle network. The Ethernet-based network may support bi-directional communication through one pair of windings and may support a transmission rate of up to 10 Gbps.
There has been an increasing demand for software updates of deployed control devices of vehicles, and various methods for the software updates of control devices have been proposed. Among the software update methods, a scheduled update method may update software of a control device by setting a specific reservation time (for example, a time when the vehicle is not running or the vehicle's ignition is turned off).
In the scheduled update method according to the prior art, a communicator (e.g., a telematics unit or a multimedia head unit) disposed in a vehicle may be woken up at the specific reservation time, and the communicator may download software to be updated from the software center. Thereafter, the downloaded software can be used by each control device in order to update software of each control device.
Such the conventional software update method has a problem that a large amount of electric power is consumed because electronic control units (ECUs) of control devices woken up for the scheduled update operate. That is, there is a problem that power consumption is increased because not only a control device for which software is updated but also other control devices are woken up.